Marc J. Selverstone heads the acclaimed Presidential Recordings Program at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, where he edits the secret White House tapes of John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon. He has written for the Washington Post, Atlantic, and U.S. News and World Report and appeared on C-Span radio. He is the author of Constructing the Monolith: The United States, Great Britain, and International Communism, 1945–1950, winner of the Stuart L. Bernath Book Prize from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, and is Associate Professor in Presidential Studies at the University of Virginia.

The Cold War historian John Lewis Gaddis wrote 20 years ago that American statesmen in the postwar period never ‘believed in the existence of an international Communist monolith.’ After reading Selverstone’s work, it would be hard to accept that judgement… The parallels between ‘Communist monolith’ thinking and the ‘axis of evil’ delusion which infected the United States after 9/11 are all too clear… This is not a general history of the early Cold War, but rather a study of how the policymaking elites of Great Britain and the United States tried to develop ground rules and useful concepts in order to manage a perceived threat… Twenty years after the democratic upheavals of 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Union, the idea that Communism was ever a serious threat to the American way now seems ridiculous—as ridiculous as the idea that al-Qaida could destroy liberal democracy.

• * Acknowledgments * Introduction * The Inheritance * Appraising the Enigma * Supporting Free Peoples * The Cominform * A Break in the Bloc * The Wedge Strategy * Anti-Stalinist Communism * Korea * Conclusion * Notes * Index

Marc J. Selverstone heads the acclaimed Presidential Recordings Program at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, where he edits the secret White House tapes of John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon. He has written for the Washington Post, Atlantic, and U.S. News and World Report and appeared on C-Span radio. He is the author of Constructing the Monolith: The United States, Great Britain, and International Communism, 1945–1950, winner of the Stuart L. Bernath Book Prize from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, and is Associate Professor in Presidential Studies at the University of Virginia.

The Cold War historian John Lewis Gaddis wrote 20 years ago that American statesmen in the postwar period never ‘believed in the existence of an international Communist monolith.’ After reading Selverstone’s work, it would be hard to accept that judgement… The parallels between ‘Communist monolith’ thinking and the ‘axis of evil’ delusion which infected the United States after 9/11 are all too clear… This is not a general history of the early Cold War, but rather a study of how the policymaking elites of Great Britain and the United States tried to develop ground rules and useful concepts in order to manage a perceived threat… Twenty years after the democratic upheavals of 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Union, the idea that Communism was ever a serious threat to the American way now seems ridiculous—as ridiculous as the idea that al-Qaida could destroy liberal democracy.

• * Acknowledgments * Introduction * The Inheritance * Appraising the Enigma * Supporting Free Peoples * The Cominform * A Break in the Bloc * The Wedge Strategy * Anti-Stalinist Communism * Korea * Conclusion * Notes * Index

Marc J. Selverstone heads the acclaimed Presidential Recordings Program at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, where he edits the secret White House tapes of John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon. He has written for the Washington Post, Atlantic, and U.S. News and World Report and appeared on C-Span radio. He is the author of Constructing the Monolith: The United States, Great Britain, and International Communism, 1945–1950, winner of the Stuart L. Bernath Book Prize from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, and is Associate Professor in Presidential Studies at the University of Virginia.

The Cold War historian John Lewis Gaddis wrote 20 years ago that American statesmen in the postwar period never ‘believed in the existence of an international Communist monolith.’ After reading Selverstone’s work, it would be hard to accept that judgement… The parallels between ‘Communist monolith’ thinking and the ‘axis of evil’ delusion which infected the United States after 9/11 are all too clear… This is not a general history of the early Cold War, but rather a study of how the policymaking elites of Great Britain and the United States tried to develop ground rules and useful concepts in order to manage a perceived threat… Twenty years after the democratic upheavals of 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Union, the idea that Communism was ever a serious threat to the American way now seems ridiculous—as ridiculous as the idea that al-Qaida could destroy liberal democracy.

• * Acknowledgments * Introduction * The Inheritance * Appraising the Enigma * Supporting Free Peoples * The Cominform * A Break in the Bloc * The Wedge Strategy * Anti-Stalinist Communism * Korea * Conclusion * Notes * Index